DETERMINISM: Our choices and actions are the result of pre-existing conditions.
We do not have free will or the capacity to choose between alternatives.
We are not responsible for our actions, cannot be blamed or praised
for them, because we cannot act "against" or contrary to the forces or pre-existing
conditions that compel us (psychological, social, economic, environmental, genetic).
Since we could not have done otherwise, it is pointless to grant rewards or
impose punishments.

SCIENTIFIC DETERMINISM: The notion that every event in nature, including human
choice and action, is the result of and can be explained in terms of antecedent
or preexisting causes or conditions. Scientific determinism includes both --

- ENVIRONMENTAL CONDITIONS, or forces outside of individual persons, such
as climate (hot or cold, rainy or dry, etc.), culture (custom and language),
history, and technology AND

FREE WILL: This is the human capacity to think or imagine alternatives and
choose between them without compulsion from inner psychological forces or outer
natural, social, and economic factors. Free will is the capacity to act on our
own and "against " conditions. Free will should be distinguished from
FREEDOM, which is simply the absence of things getting in the way of what we
are compelled to want and do. The prisoner loses his "physical freedom" when
he or she is imprisoned.

LIBERTARIANISM: This is the view that our choices are free, and that we can
control our lives. It maintains that, although people do not always control
their lives, they are at least capable of doing so. We are responsible
for our actions, because we could have chosen or acted otherwise. According
to this view, we are AUTONOMOUS; that is, we are self-ruling or self-moving
agents of our own lives. We need not be ruled or moved by things outside of
our own will. According to Iummanuel Kant, moral responsibility implies
or presupposes free will. He stated: "Ought implies can."

FATALISM: This is the position that everything that happens is destined to
happen the way it does. Existence is like a book that has already been written.
All we can do is passively turn the pages of each chapter. Destiny or fate or
cosmic rules make everything happen the way it does. The die is set in advance.
What we think are free choices between alternatives are really fixed and unalterable
results. PREDESTINATION also holds that everything has been fixed in advance,
but it adds the personal notion of a god or providence whose knowledge in advance
makes things happen the way they do.